People Are Doing the ‘Bird Box’ Challenge, And Netflix Is Begging People Not to Take It

Netflix has released new movies by the Coen brothers and Orson Welles in the last two months, and they have a frontrunner to be nominated for (and maybe win!) the Oscar for Best Picture in February. But the Netflix movie everyone seems to be talking about right now is Bird Box, the new dystopian thriller starring Sandra Bullock as a woman trying to survive in a world gone mad that’s populated by monsters that once seen drive people to commit suicide. To protect themselves, the heroes must blindfold themselves whenever they go outside, lest they lock eyes with one of these creatures.

So naturally, people who’ve seen the film are now copying it. What could go wrong when you blindfold yourself and then wander out in public?

If you are on social media, you’ve almost certainly seen people attempting some kind of #birdboxchallenge — where they perform a task blindfolded. Some are pretty benign, like putting on makeup blindfolded:

Some people have even attempted longer challenges, where they blindfold themselves for a day or more:

Then there are other stunts which are borderline dangerous or even reckless, and I’m not going to share those because I would rather not encourage that sort of behavior, lest I become an unintended accessory to a concussion, broken limb, or worse.

In fact some of these #birdboxchallenges have gotten so fraught that Netflix itself has taken to social media to literally beg people to chill out. They don’t outright say don’t do this stuff, but they do outright say don’t do this stuff if it could result in your potential maiming — like, say, by trying to cross a busy intersection blindfolded:

Bird Box is streaming now on Netflix. How about you take a realBird Box challenge and try to watch it blindfolded? Now that would be something.